At first glance the Internet version is a very slick and smooth interface, which displays recent trends for ID theft, malware, spam and fraud.

It then goes on to break these crimes down into their respective areas detailing (where relevant) items such as recent incidents, countries that house 'dangerous' sites and top malware attacks.

The index data is reported as coming from Symantec's Global Intelligence Network, with additional data coming from ID Analytics and DataLossDB.

As you would expect the Cybercrime Index includes links to purchase cybercrime defence software (malware, spam, etc) from Norton (Symantec).

Personally I feel this is a missed opportunity, of course Norton (Symantec) are in this for the license fees, but this tool could have been used as an opportunity to educate users rather than what appears at the moment to be a rather slick presentation of FUD.

Russell Thomas
In my blog post on this topic, I call it "Security Metrics Theater". Too bad Symantec didn't invest their money, effort, and PR into risk metrics that would actually improve decision-making rather than just add to the fog.

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